


Calling Hours

by trajectory



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Misery, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Swearing Revenge On The Wrong Target, funerary practices, robot gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25285915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trajectory/pseuds/trajectory
Summary: Horri-Bull’s dead. Somebody still has to deal with the body.
Relationships: Horri-Bull/Needlenose (Transformers)
Kudos: 10





	Calling Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the events of Robots In Disguise #1. Unbeta'd.
> 
> Along with the above tags, this story contains brief descriptions of robot gore, coping badly with a loved one dying, and Needlenose doing some victim blaming of Zetca (a neutral civilian) for ‘causing’ said death of a loved one by resisting the beating they were giving him. It makes references to past sexual interfacing, and to Horri-Bull and Needlenose abusing their government ‘authority’ to harass civilians.

Needlenose dragged Horri-Bull’s body all the way out to the outskirts of the ramshackle collection of ships and buildings they were calling a city and then just… kept walking past the edge of the unplundered wilderness.

It wasn’t smart. Needlenose didn’t _care_.

People had cleared out pretty quick from the scene after the Autobots had left, and nobody stopped him.

The body wasn’t light. He couldn’t cover the distance fast. Needlenose’s alt mode didn’t have cargo space big enough for the body. But as long as he looked straight ahead of him and put one foot in front of the other and thought of absolutely anything but who the fresh layer of energon caked on his hands belonged to, Needlenose could do it. He _could_. So he did.

One of Horri-Bull’s arms limply dragged over the bumpy ground behind him.

He kept hauling the body between the steep inclines of escarpments and over what felt like a dozen rocky crags, until he couldn’t see the city lights nor hear anything beyond the constant, rusted groaning of vast sheets of metal settling.

Needlenose came to a stop at the edge of a ridge in a gorge, nestled down between two high escarpments, and strewn with boulders and scraggy foliage. Far below, a river of lava and molten lead snaked in a glowing ribbon past the base of the gorge.

Standing was an effort.

He sat down next to the body and tried to look at the mass of slagged metal and smoking wires where Horri-Bull’s helm had been. He couldn’t at first. His optics flinched away from the torn ooze of the exposed spinal strut, sliding off to the side like solvent being repelled by wax. Then his gaze was irresistibly drawn back. The energon from the mech that Horri-Bull had been beating mixed with Horri-Bull’s vital fluids. The frame’s upper shoulders were streaked with it. Horri-Bull’s yellow paintjob had dimmed to dull gray, followed by the patchy disappearance of the purple and black paint as nanite colonies died off.

“You… You _moron_ ,” Needlenose choked out over the lump in his intake, trying to sound angry. “Taunting those Autobots like that, damn you. Damn it. _Stupid_. That wasn’t _the_ stupidest thing you’ve ever done, but it was up there in the top five! I told you, don’t keep pushing it. Why in Primus’ name did you do that?” He swiped a hand across his face. “You really didn’t think they’d trigger the chip, did you? You thought they were too big of wimps.” To be fair, Needlenose himself hadn’t thought they had it in them to follow through either.

Then energon and bits of Horri-Bull’s cranial unit had splattered across the ground.

Needlenose’s face screwed up, optics brightening hotly.

He thumped his fist a couple times on the greyed out chest. “Couldn’t you have picked any _other_ time than that to yank the Autobots’ tails? Dumbaft!” He irrationally wanted a reaction: for Horri-Bull to sit up and grunt at him, paying him back insult for insult, verbal smack for smack. For Horri-Bull to be alive in abundance, like he always had been, standing tall by Needlenose’s side. For the mechanisms in Horri-Bull’s chest to make that deep rumbling noise as Horri-Bull wrapped him in his arms and held him close.

But no amount of _wanting_ was going to bring Horri-Bull back to life.

That wasn’t how the world worked.

Needlenose made a wet noise that definitely wasn’t a sob. Decepticons weren’t weaklings, sniffling over deactivated companions. Under the grey armor, no spark pulsed. The frame’s metal was cool to the touch, and when Needlenose cracked his plating open in a final effort to check for an energy signature, to deny the reality of what was before him, Horri-Bull’s spark casing was dark.

Wings drooping low, he closed him back up.

Needlenose shuttered his optics and didn’t move for a while.

Horri-Bull’s spark was gone, down to Vector Sigma and into the safety of the Allspark. They’d meet there again someday. Horri-Bull would be waiting. He would be faithful and forgive Needlenose for making him wait, just like Needlenose would for him. They wouldn’t be separated forever.

Emptying Horri-Bull’s subspace and the compartments in his legs was a task that didn’t take much time. Neither of them had been in the habit of owning more than they could carry and Needlenose had looted the corpses of comrades before. Their imprisonment in Kimia’s old gunbarrel had given the Autobots a chance to confiscate any weapons Horri-Bull had on him, but Needlenose found the worn adapter cable they’d used a couple nights back to get around the problem of Needlenose’s latest frame model not having his old upgrades equipped to make the ports comfortably compatible with Horri-Bull’s cables, two firework sticks, an used bullet, two-thirds of a broken hoverboard, three lighters, somebody’s thumb, some shanix, and a half-empty bottle of Old Corroder. Needlenose took the spare shanix since Horri-Bull wouldn’t need it anymore and stored it in his own subspace.

Everything else, he put back in. It would go into the lava with Horri-Bull.

Next, Needlenose cleaned the body up, as well as the circumstances would allow. He couldn’t erase the marks of a life where war had become a part of the daily routine, the deep scratches and nicks from fighting, but he wiped away the scuff marks, dabbed off the street grit. He had a cloth he normally used for keeping his topcoat pristine. He used it to remove the energon from the seams where it collected.

Needlenose ran his hand over the purple brand on Horri-Bull’s chest.

Like Needlenose’s own proof of his commitment to the Cause, the brand had been made from a piece of his partner’s spark casing.

He pried it off.

Then, fingers hooked to get under the edges, he took off his own brand and plastered it into the same spot on Horri-Bull’s chest.

Still crouching, Needlenose pressed the brand he had swapped out onto his chassis. It stuck into place. The exchange complete, he then fumbled at his side. His hands shook, coated in Horri-Bull’s energon. He wished this was more _dignified_ , less of an ugly business. But it was hard to pretty up death. Decanting his innermost energon into a small vial took a few minutes. He’d done this once before—but—but, it had been a mutual trade then, not a post-mortem offering. He would prefer a fancier vial—but he didn’t have any others on him and if he left Horri-Bull’s body to go back to the city to find one, what if somebody desecrated the corpse or a turbofox found it while Needlenose wasn’t there to protect it? So it had to be this undecorated glass one he’d found while rooting around in Kimia’s backrooms. It looked like it’d been used to measure out chemicals for scientific experiments, once.

Horri-Bull deserved better than this, Needlenose mourned. Horri-Bull deserved a wake and proper services, with fireworks and dancing and an actual smelting pool so his frame could be melted down _right_. Not just Needlenose and a lava river in the middle of nowhere.

It was still more than most bots got during the war.

Better than rusting away, just another wreckage among many on a distant battlefield.

“Here,” he swallowed. “It’s the traditional thing to do.”

He set the vial down on the ground. He didn’t have a speech prepared. Needlenose said, “May your…” He cast about for the words. He recited, “May your journey to the AllSpark be safe and swift. May you join with the many who came before us and may the many who came before us join with you. And give Primus the Pit when you get there.”

Needlenose looked downwards, where Vector Sigma was far below. “Horri-Bull,” Needlenose continued, “I’m glad I met you.”

Over four millennia ago, there had been a meeting with a stranger at a fuel deport and an impulsive invitation. Needlenose couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Something that had brought him so much joy couldn’t possibly be a mistake. A memory-file swam up: they’d been celebrating after a rally together the first time one of Horri-Bull’s advances went somewhere, high on the rush of revolution, drunk on the belief the Decepticons were going to shape the world and make it theirs. They had been so much younger back then. So convinced they would live forever, acting like death was nowhere in the background. He stood up. “I’ll honor you by making sure the one who killed you answers to my face for it.”

**////**

Needlenose hauled Horri-Bull’s body to the edge of the ridge. The wave of heat emitting from the molten river rose up and smacked Needlenose in the face, backlighting his features in its red glow. He reset his intake and shoved the body over the edge.

It fell.

Lava swallowed the grey shape whole, smoke hissing out and melting metal warping and bubbling.

Needlenose waited, standing vigil until all of the body had vanished. It was only then that he chose to turn on his heel and start making his way out of the gorge. The vial of innermost energon remained when he’d placed it.

He’d mourn Horri-Bull fully later.

Revenge came first.

 _Bumblebee_.

In his helm, the name was laced with hatred.

Bumblebee had just… stood there, like Bumblebee didn’t even care that he had just murdered the one person, the one true friend Needlenose had left in the world that he loved. His partner. (Sunbeam was dead, a casualty of the battle where they’d lost Karashi-Delta to the Autobots. They’d found him broken in gun mode with his internals spilling out. Grouchy and prone to uncooperativeness to the end, Zigzag was dead, killed by a commanding officer on Elpasos in a fit of rage when he’d said the wrong thing in response to being charged with incompetence. And Tracks and him, they hadn’t had a civil conversation without the blasters coming out since before the war. Some family he was. Tracks probably didn’t even _view_ him as his spark brother anymore.)

How dare he. The Autobots and their new government really _were_ as bad as the Senate. And Metalhawk was just as bad. The coward flier had barely put up more than a token protest when Bumblebee did it! And they acted like they were better than the Decepticons just because they were the ones who managed to come out on top when the dust had cleared?

Speaking of cowards. That coward NAIL.

Needlenose wanted to kill that NAIL.

No, scrap that. He didn’t just want to make that NAIL dead, he wanted to make that NAIL _suffer_. There was a difference.

It was that mech’s fault that Horri-Bull was gone. Needlenose didn’t know the NAIL’s name, but he knew his face and he would find out his name and the coward would get what was coming to him first; then Bumblebee would have his turn next and Needlenose would have satisfaction. If Horri-Bull was a corpse because Bumblebee had pushed that button, then Bumblebee should be one too. Needlenose was going to even the score. It would be good. Sweet, even. It would be _something_ to fill the hollowness opening up inside him where Horri-Bull had once been with.

Needlenose didn’t wonder what he would do with himself if there was nothing that would fill that pit.

**Author's Note:**

> I headcanon Needlenose switched his badge with Horri-Bull’s badge after he died and whenever Needlenose shows up afterwards, that’s his badge on Needlenose’s chest. There are multiple things I don’t like about how Needlenose/Horri-Bull was handled in canon, but I could say the same about... many other things that are IDW1 canon.


End file.
